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Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Without a doubt our award for Business Travel Villain goes
to roaming charges! No one likes them and yet we all get them when travelling
abroad and there is very little we can do about it – or is there? Here at
RoamingExpert.com we have put together a guide with some handy hints and tips
on how to banish that villain or at least reduce its impact on your budget.

Look at where you roam
to

Where is it that you travel to mainly? Is it outside of
Europe, within Europe or all a combination of both? Each network has slightly
different rates depending on where you go.

Do you use voice, data
or both?

What is your main concern when roaming? is it your voice
calls, data usage or both? Again, different networks have different charges for
voice and data and some are more competitive than others so it is important to
know how you need to use your mobile when you are roaming.

What handset do you
use?

We would always recommend using a Blackberry as they
compress data more efficiently than other handsets and so data charges will
always be less.

What are your roaming
rates like?

Are your current roaming rates competitive? Or are they
actually over inflated? What are you being charged to visit the countries you
do? Roaming rates from provider to provider vary greatly some are vastly
overinflated.

Do you know how your
network bills?

The networks bill completely differently, some calls may be
included in inclusive minutes and some may not.
Also some networks charge per minute and some per second, this can make
a big difference to your final bill.

Renewing your mobile contract may not be the top of your
list of priorities but if you want to avoid a major travel villain in today’s
new, global and technologically focused world it could well pay to re assess
your contract. Finding out a little more about it and taking some top tips on
how to best deal with the situation could well pay off and we are here to help
too of course!

This blog was written by Kate Staley, marketing manager with Roaming Expert. You can contact her at kate.staley@roamingexpert.com and find out more about the company at www.roamingexpert.com

Friday, 16 November 2012

Everywhere we look someone
is discussing meetings: meetings management, strategic meetings management,
small meetings management – but this is not a new subject. ‘SMM’ has been the ‘next big thing’ for
years. So why, after all this time, is
there still so much talk and so little action?

Admittedly there are
plenty of reasons offered up:

No clear internal
owner to champion the initiative and drive success. The absence of a solution that is easy to
deploy, supports broad based adoption AND integrates with the rest of your
hotel management strategy. The other
perennial favorite, “we don’t really have that many meetings”, is also all too
often cited.

These and many other
factors contribute to an ‘Ostrich Mentality’: I can’t see it, therefore it
isn’t there.

But it IS there and
the cost implications of ignoring this category can be huge. Admittedly, you don’t know what you don’t
know, but from our own experience the total ‘hospitality’ spend for the
majority of organisations is split across 3 areas – 40% on Transient
Accommodation, 40% on Meetings and 20% on ad hoc Projects. If your focus is purely on your Transient
Accommodation, you are managing less than 50% of your total hotel spend.

So – how difficult
can this really be?

You need to
understand what your requirement is, so start small. Begin by identifying your target
audience. Head for the departments most
likely to generate meetings bookings – sales/marketing, training, the executive
floor – and ask for volunteers for a ‘super-user’ test team.

At this stage, you
want to garner support and not give the impression that you are trying to take
away the responsibility for these meetings.
All you want is to build the environment where everyone creates their
meetings requests (RFPs) in one place.
From there you will quickly gather the data you need to put the
‘strategic’ into strategic meetings management.

Aim to start with the
small frequently booked meetings. The large
conferences and major company events may be the more visible piece but (a) it’s
always much tougher to persuade these bookers to give up any aspect of control or
management of these bookings and (b) the chances are that you spend much more
on smaller meetings. You are offering
meeting planners a solution that will take the ‘grunt work’ out of the process
without stripping them of ultimate control and the easiest meetings to target
for this are the smaller ones – which are usually just a time consuming chore
for those that have to book them.

Ask a few basic
questions:

Approximately how
often do you book? What’s the average
size of the group and the length of the meeting? What are the most common features they always
need (refreshments, break out rooms, AV equipment etc)? What type of venue do they typically look for
(hotels, internal meeting space, other venues)? Where do they go to find these venues and what
influences their choice?

The answers will help
you build the most useful information and features into your RFP tool so that
the first time a meeting planner looks for a venue for a meeting, they find
what they expect to see and the basic information is pre-loaded to make it the
simpler process that you promised!

So all you now need
is a system that all your meeting planners can access with nothing more than a
User ID and Password, without any additional implementation, and with just an
hour or so training.

And if they like it,
if the system gives them access to the properties they need, helps them create
an RFP with all their requirements in 4 easy to follow steps, presents the
responses in a format they can share with their colleagues, gives them full
budgeting and reporting capabilities and allows them to complete the process in
a fraction of the time, then you’ve got your ‘champions’ within the
organisation and selling the benefits to others will be so much easier.

And finally, the
single most important element to consider.
The first step on the road to success is always the hardest. As you
ponder this article, think about this.
What stops you from being the
internal champion that gets the ball rolling at your company? Just because you don’t have it in your job
description, does that mean you can’t own it?
At a time when companies are in a constant process of evaluating people,
processes and performance, perhaps the greatest
thing you can do for your company and yourself is to take that critical first
step.

This blog has been written by Jean Squires, director of business development EMEA, Lanyon. To find out more about how the Lanyon Meetings RFP Tool can help please contact Jean at jean.squires@lanyon.com

Monday, 12 November 2012

Business travel is faster and less isolating than it used to be
but, until recently, no-one has been looking out for the business traveller.
Now, the landscape is changing and Concur is proud to be a leader in that
evolution.

Travel
used to be lonely. Gradually, over the past 10 years, and rapidly in the last
two, the Internet and mobile devices have changed business travel for the
better. Our smartphones now fulfil a dual role of travel buddy and
personal assistant. But we still have a steep hill to climb to improve business
travel even more.

The current reality:

Self-serve
online travel booking enables the business traveller to book travel at a click
of a button – but, because no-one is looking at the experience through the eyes
of the business traveller, the whole experience is very disjointed and often
frustrating. For those that travel across Europe, there’s the added
complication of different languages, currencies, procedures and cultures to
overcome.

A vision for the future of business travel:

Concur
has spent considerable time thinking about what would make ‘The Perfect
Trip’. Imagine a journey with no paper or queues, a journey where your
smartphone knows your preferences and has pre-booked every step of the journey
to seamlessly blend into the next. We have this perfect trip
firmly in mind, and we’re figuring out how to make it happen

How Concur is working to improve business travel:

Making
the perfect trip a reality will mean partnership and collaboration between
travel suppliers across the entire eco-system for the good of the business
traveller. This a huge challenge, particularly in Europe, where suppliers’
regional coverage varies so dramatically. Fortunately, the landscape is already
changing and Concur is proud to be a leader in that evolution.

What happens next?

By
sharing ideas on how business travel can be improved due to technological
integration and the fostering of closer networks we can help shape the future of business travel together. So, whether you are
travel supplier, travel app developer, card provider, in the travel business or
a business traveller, we’d love to hear your ideas and opinions.

How do you think business travel could be better?

What
are your favourite travel apps? What innovations would make the most
impact on travel in Europe? These are the kind of questions that will
influence the development of a bigger, better travel and expenses management
network across Europe. We
have made a start by setting up a Facebook
community for those that want to contribute or stay in touch with
developments. Join us – like us or post your recommendation in the
comments below.

Written by Lisa Hutt

Lisa heads marketing for Concur Technologies in EMEA and is responsible for growth in the region through brand awareness, pipeline generation and customer success programs. Lisa is an advocate of the latest marketing innovations, global collaboration, sales alignment, lead-to-revenue and influencer marketing. Lisa’s background in marketing communications was developed with IT and online organisations such as Salesforce.com, Dell, Intel, Epson, Sybase and Monster.

Monday, 5 November 2012

Thousands of
organisations are focused on cutting costs, but how are they able to do so
whilst maintaining, and even improving productivity?

Millions of us are afraid of change, which makes many of us
averse to using new technology, especially in the workplace. But the proven
fact is new technology in the workplace is the main contributor of cutting
costs, improving productivity, and even speeding up the decision making
process.

Business magnate, Richard Branson, recently quoted: “Anyone who thinks new technology isn’t going
to keep changing the world has got their head in the sand.” I know what many of you are thinking: Richard Branson is a
multi-billionaire, and for him the initial cost of implementing new technology into
the workplace is a mere drop in the ocean.

For business owners and budget handlers, yes new technology
can be costly, and no it’s extremely unlikely you’ll generate an ROI within the
first six to twelve months. But even in these tough economic times, is your
business roadmap really only twelve months? If you are just ‘ticking along’ and
your capital expenditure has halted, it is definitely time to get your head out
of the sand. If you are not prepared to invest in new collaborative technology
solutions, then you best stop aspiring to be successful. Sound harsh? It is,
but it’s the truth!

So what technology
are businesses using to cut costs?

One area
businesses are focused on is travel expenditure. Fuel, accommodation, flights,
etc. How do businesses reduce travel expenditure and remain productive? Now you’ll
be forgiven for turning your head away when you read the words “Video
conferencing”. Perhaps those words will remind you of a meeting many years ago
when you participated in a video call which was visually and audibly poor. You
left the room thinking “I hope I never have to take part in a video call ever
again.” Well as some of you will have already experienced, video conferencing
technology is now a must have business tool and has been deployed across
thousands of organisations. Bandwidth restrictions are less challenging, and
face-to-face video communication is now delivered in high definition.

Organisations
are using the technology for internal and external communication. Rather than
travelling five hundred miles for a meeting, of which 90% of the time spent
traveling is non-productive and incurs fuel and accommodation costs, businesses
are choosing to conduct meetings over video. Both time and money is saved, and
it causes little disruption to an individual’s working day.

Businesses are communicating with clients, partners and
suppliers over video. Many of the most successful organisations will refuse to
develop partnerships unless each party has adopted the use of video
collaboration technology. It’s more personal and up to 70% more productive than
a telephone call, mainly a result of facial expressions and hand gestures.

Video communication is more affordable than ever with desktop
and cloud based offerings, which cause little strain on IT departments as well
as offer interoperability, which ensures face-to-face communication between two
or more people irrespective of video device.

Cost-cutting for your business takes serious consideration,
as does devising a business development plan. However failing to include collaborative
technology in your development plan may as well be a plan to fail.

This guest blog has been written by Joel Noden who is marketing manager at Business Travel Show exhibitor Videonations Ltd.